This was the first converter box that I used my first government coupon for. If I recall correctly I had to put up about another $20.00 in additon to the government coupon to get it. It has worked well for me other than it not having the analog pass through feature. It requires a switch on the antenna coax to go around it so that I could view the satellite box or analog stations. To just use a splitter in place of a switch resulted in a poor picture quality.

One of the two negatives that I have experienced with the 7000 is the same problem that I sometimes have with my Sanyo 19" LCD HDTV in the kitchen. I have a rotor on my antenna and when I point it in the opposite direction of my local channel 11-1 and 11-2. The receiver of both of these tuners will sense the channel 11 in a distant city that I cannot even receive. The 9000 and the Sanyo will change its setting from my local channel 11 to the distant channal 11 when I did not even tune to the 11 while I was aiming at a different station in that general direction. Now when I rotate the antenna back in the direction of my local 11's and turn to them they come up with the other channel 11 call letters and no signal. Even though I tune to one of the local 11's it has still has itself set to get the station in the other direction that I cannot get. This makes it necessary to do another channel scan to view the local channel 11.

The second problem that I experienced with the 9000 is that I also have a Channel Master antenna rotor with a remote control. The remote for the rotor and the remote for the 9000 are both on the same frequency for some of there functions. Each romote changes setting on the other device that I am not trying to change. If I turn on the rotor to use it with the rotor remote I also turn on or off the 9000 box. If I enter a number into one remote that is the result in both the Channel Master rotor box and the converter box.

If you are in an area where you do not need or have the most powerful antenna that can be bought for residential use. You would probably not experience the problem with the distant TV stations that I described above. I am tuning in stations that are almost 100 miles away.

If you do not have a Channel Master rotor that has a remote control on it that is operated in the same room as the Channel Master converter box. You will obviously not have the remote tuning problem that I described.

Other than that the electronic program guide on the 9000 is in my opinion a little better than what I have seen on some of the other boxes. It will allow you to look at the schedule a few hours in advance on all of the channels that you are set to get that has the information available.

The 9000 tuner has the ability to pull in the distant stations better than some of the other converter boxes and it does this much better than my Sanyo HDTV.

The 9000 tuner also has the ability to set up for channels in one direction and then to turn the antenna and set up additional channels with out losing the previous channels that you had set. Some boxes and digital TV sets that I have seen would require a new channel scan every time the antenna was rotated. This is also a problem some of the time with my Sanyo TV set.

The 9000 produces a good picture and sound. I would consider it to be one of the best digital converter boxes that I have seen. And of the ones that I have seen I would put it second only to the Zenith DTT901. The electronic program guide in the 9000 is in my opinion better than the program guide of the Zenith box.

It would seem that when the digital TV sets, tuners and converters were designed. No one thought of all of these variables that they should over come for the equipment to function properly. It would appear to me that this is the reason that the companies that manufacture these products are now coming out with sort of a second or third generation of these products with improvements built into them.